NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (6)

[Michael Joseph]

light images also touch lightly on the (Cupid) Psyche imagery of the poem.
Psyche as human spirit, wed to a monster/death, harrower of hell, and
ultimately immortalized by Jupiter at Cupid's request, is conventionally
represented (e.g. Gerard, David, Canova)  as a butterfly, of which Shade's
poem includes abundant examples. The Greek word Psyche specifically refers
to a kind of night moth. Hazel's suicide (following her disastrous efforts
on behalf of love) occurs at night, and could, conceivably, be thought of
as a wedding to death (just as Psyche's marriage, arranged by the oracle,
is portrayed as an execution). The ambiguous nature of revelation is
nicely figured in Psyche's lamplight discovery of Cupid's reposing body--a
discovery that simultaneously makes her fall deeply in love with him and
precipitates his flight that leaves her bereft: the deadly ambiguity of
the moth beating her wings against the flame.


Michael



On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Jasper Fidget wrote:

> p. 132
> "The dim light he discharged at last was now his dearest companion, Oleg's
> ghost, the phantom of freedom"
>
> By "discharged" Kinbote means "(Allow to) escape or flow out; pour forth,
> emit; (of a river) empty (itself), flow into" (OED), which also has some
> parallel sexual connotations given the vessel of the tunnel into which his
> light is discharged ("He experienced a blend of anguish and exultation, a
> kind of amorous joy" (p. 132)); but also "Send away; let go" (OED), an
> exorcism of Oleg's spirit into the tunnel through which it will guide the
> king toward freedom.  But "the phantom of freedom" implies an illusion, a
> figment of the imagination, an unreality (OED), while also suggesting the
> will o' the wisp connected to Gradus in the form of Jack (-o'-lantern,
> /ignis fatuus/, the "false fire" that will lead one astray).
>
> "Phantom" also recalls Shade's first reference to Hazel: "The phantom of my
> little daughter's swing" (ln 57), and the light recalls Hazel's description
> of "a roundlet of pale light" (p. 188) in the barn.
>
> p. 133
> "the pretty page"
>
> Charles associates the memory of Oleg with the day of his coronation and the
> hair oil aroma of his "pretty page" (Baron Mandevil -- see p. 147).  The
> page had bent over in order to "brush a rose petal off the footstool," and
> that rose petal has now become Charles himself, who discovers he is
> "hideously garbed in bright red" (p. 133).
>
> p. 133
> "The secret passage seemed to have grown more squalid"
>
> It's run down now, the "intrusion of its surroundings was even more
> evident."  The perfect fantasy of his youth, the discovery and mystery that
> this tunnel led him through with Oleg, and the new experience of sex no
> longer has the same power to enthrall him the way it once did: it's only a
> part of his past now, "a remembered spread of colored sand [that] bore the
> thirty-year-old patterned imprint of Oleg's shoe"; its relationship with the
> world is more obvious, its exterior connections more noticeable to his adult
> mind "at the spot where the passage went through the foundations of a
> museum" (133).
>
> p. 133
> "The pool of opalescent ditch water had grown in length; along its edge
> walked a sick bat like a cripple with a broken umbrella."
>
> Gradus making a cameo in the tunnel.  See Gradus' "urgent and blind flight"
> (p. 135), and his poor eyesight (p. 232).  Right now he's in a holding
> pattern like that monoplane Kinbote sees flying in circles at WU, but soon
> his vicious circle, like Charles' own, will break loose and fly outward.
> That the pool has "grown in length" may imply Yeats' spiraling circle in
> "The Second Coming" -- this would be Charles' second coming through this
> tunnel.
>
> Gradus must have landed here after being knocked down on p. 123: "Around the
> lantern that stood on the bench a batlike moth blindly flapped -- until the
> punter knocked it down with his cap" (122-123).
>
> p. 133
> "thirty-year-old patterned imprint of Oleg's shoe"
>
> 30 is visually half 80 -- Charles is at the halfway point in the tunnel and
> Oleg's ghost is still guiding him toward his destination at the Royal
> Theater.
>
> p. 133
> "there had somehow wandered down, to exile and disposal, a headless statue
> of Mercury, conductor of souls to the Lower World"
>
> Believed to be derived from the Latin "merx" or "mercator" meaning
> "merchant," Mercury is also the god of trade, profit, and commerce, here
> cast into subterranean exile by the Zemblan revolution.  Luckily for
> Charles, Mercury is also the protector of travelers, as well as the creator
> of all art.  Associated with the Greek Hermes and the Celtic Lugus (Rome as
> the nexus of cultures once again -- Caesar noted of the Celts, "of all the
> gods they most worship Mercury").
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury/God
> http://www.mabinogion.info/Lugus.htm
>
> p. 133
> "a cracked krater with two black figures shown dicing under a black palm"
>
> A brief reprise of the mirrored cage dualism in the two black figures
> dicing, but the image is cracked now and historical, a remnant of the past
> (like all symbols?).
>
> A krater is a Greek bowl with two handles and a foot, often decorated with
> scenes of people relaxing, and often used for mixing wine and water at
> symposia.  May suggest Keat's urn, "foster-child of Silence and slow Time."
>
> http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/kl/krater.html
> http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html
>
> p. 133
> "contained an accumulation of loose boards"
>
> The secret passage begins in the "lumber room" and ends with an "accumlation
> of loose boards," a clear origin and destination.  The green room at the
> back of the theater is Charles' synthesis, his means of escape *into*
> theater (which will take the instance of _Henry IV_ with all those
> counterfeit kings running around -- see p. 143), into literature and
> imagination, into art -- into Iris Acht's dressing room.
>
> p. 133
> "a heavy black drapery"
>
> Immediately beyond the green door is a "heavy black drapery," the wall of
> the unknown.  While grappling to pass through it his flashlight ("torch")
> "rolled its hopeless eye and went out," and when Charles drops it "it fell
> into muffled nothingness" (133).  Oleg's spirit in the form of the light
> cannot follow Charles beyond the tunnel -- there is nothing left for it to
> cast itself into, space has run out and only time remains; the king is
> released and Oleg must remain in the past.  Is the "phantom of freedom" also
> dispelled?
>
> p. 134
> "the Sunday attire of Gutnish fishermen, and his fist still clenched the
> cardboard knife with which he had just dispatched his sweetheart."
>
> A strange folding of time at the Royal Theater -- what are the odds that
> Odon and his troupe of actors should be performing the very same play that
> Charles and Oleg overheard in rehearsal thirty years ago?!  (See p. 127.)
> As Odon says, in parallel to his predecessor: "Good God."
>
> p. 134
> "Plucking a couple of cloaks from a heap of fantastic raiments"
>
> It is fitting that Charles should don a "fantastic cloak" for his journey
> into fairy tales about to commence.
>
> p. 135
> "a puddle reflected his scarlet silhouette"
>
> A return of the mirror.  Charles has escaped his physical cage but his
> spiritual captivity persists.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
>